“The second point is that the girl in Webster’s should have recognised, and even identified, Sir Eustace from his photograph. That also doesn’t appear to me, if Miss Dammers doesn’t mind my saying so, nearly as significant as she would have us believe. I have ascertained,” said Mr. Chitterwick, not without pride (here too was a piece of real detecting) “that Sir Eustace Pennefather buys his notepaper at Webster’s, and has done so for years. He was in there about a month ago to order a fresh supply. It would be surprising, considering that he has a title, if the girl who served him had not remembered him; it cannot be considered significant,” said Mr. Chitterwick quite firmly, “that she does.
“Apart from the typewriter, then, and perhaps the copies of the criminological books, Miss Dammers’s case has no real evidence to support it at all, for the matter of the broken alibi, I am afraid, must be held to be neither here nor there. I don’t wish to be unfair,” said Mr. Chitterwick carefully, “but I think I am justified in saying that Miss Dammers’s case against Sir Eustace rests entirely and solely upon the evidence of the typewriter.” He gazed round anxiously for possible objections.
One came, promptly. “But you can’t possibly get round that,” exclaimed Mrs. Fielder-Flemming impatiently.
Mr. Chitterwick looked a trifle distressed. “Is ‘get round’ quite the right expression? I’m not trying wilfully or maliciously to pick holes in Miss Dammers’s case just for amusement. You must really believe that. Please think that I am actuated only by a desire to bring this crime home to its real perpetrator. And with that end alone in view, I can certainly suggest an explanation of the typewriter evidence which excludes the guilt of Sir Eustace.”
Mr. Chitterwick looked so unhappy at what he conceived to be Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s insinuation that he was merely wasting the Circle’s time, that Roger spoke to him kindly.
“You can?” he said gently, as one encourages one’s daughter on drawing a cow, which if not much like a cow is certainly unlike any other animal on earth. “That’s very interesting, Mr. Chitterwick. How do you explain it then?”
Mr. Chitterwick, responding to treatment, shone with pride. “Dear me! You can’t see it really? Nobody sees it?”
It seemed that nobody saw it.
“And yet the possibility of such a thing has been before me right from the beginning of the case,” crowed the now triumphant Mr. Chitterwick. “Well, well!” He arranged his glasses on his nose and beamed round the circle, his round red face positively aglow.
“Well, what is the explanation, Mr. Chitterwick?” queried Miss Dammers, when it seemed that Mr. Chitterwick was going to continue beaming in silence forever.
“Oh! Oh, yes; of course. Why, to put it one way, Miss Dammers, that you were wrong and Mr. Sheringham was right, in your respective estimates of the criminal’s ability. That there was, in fact, an extremely able and ingenious mind behind this murder (Miss Dammers’s attempts to prove the contrary were, I’m afraid another case of special pleading). And that one of the ways in which this ingenuity was shown, was to arrange the evidence in such a way that if anyone were to be suspected it would be Sir Eustace. That the evidence of the typewriter, in a word, and of the criminological books was, as I believe the technical word is, ‘rigged.’ ” Mr. Chitterwick resumed his beam.
Everybody sat up with what might have been a concerted jerk. In a flash the tide of feeling towards Mr. Chitterwick had turned. The man had got something to say after all. There actually was an idea behind that untimely request of the previous evening.
Mr. Bradley rose to the occasion, and he quite forgot to speak quite so patronisingly as usual. “I say—dam’ good, Chitterwick! But can you substantiate that?”
“Oh, yes. I think so,” said Mr. Chitterwick, basking in the rays of appreciation that were being shone on him.
“You’ll be telling us next you know who did it,” Roger smiled.
Mr. Chitterwick smiled back. “Oh, I know that.”
“What!” exclaimed five voices in chorus.
“I know that, of course,” said Mr. Chitterwick modestly. “You’ve practically told me that yourselves. Coming last of all, you see, my task was comparatively simple. All I had to do was to sort out the true from the false in everybody else’s statements, and—well, there was the truth.”
The rest of the Circle looked their surprise at having told Mr. Chitterwick the truth without knowing it themselves.
Mr. Chitterwick’s face took on a meditative aspect. “Perhaps I may confess now that when our President first propounded his idea to us, I was filled with dismay. I had had no practical experience of detecting, I was quite at a loss as to how to set about it, and I had no theory of the case at all. I could not even see a starting-point. The week flew by, so far as I was concerned, and left me exactly where I had been at its beginning. On the evening Sir Charles spoke he convinced me completely. The next evening, for a short time, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming convinced me too.
“Mr. Bradley did not altogether convince me that he had committed the murder himself, but if he had named anyone else then I should have been convinced; as it was, he convinced me that his—his discarded mistress theory,” said Mr. Chitterwick bravely, “must be the
